I’m not one to sit and write letters to a website, but I’ve seen too much not to speak out.
I’ve grown up in Lakewood and lived here for over 30 years. The area I grew up in had shootings, stabbings and many other terrible crimes every single week. There was almost not a single week that went by that we didn’t see or hear of a violent crime in my neighborhood.
I remember times I was afraid to go to sleep at night because a neighbor of mine had his house shot up and bullets went through my classmates’s bedroom nearly killing him. I even remember a night where there were three shootings on a single night, each one retaliating for a different crime.
I remember shootings in broad daylight too where neighbors were shot and killed. The crime and hate was real and we all witnessed it.
If you don’t believe what I’m telling you, I welcome you to ask any retired police officer or detective that were in our hood daily.
Why am I sharing this? I’ll tell you why.
I’m black, and have had my fair share of racial attacks in my childhood and beyond. I’ve seen what hate can do and what it can lead to. Thankfully I had parents who guided me and gave me an education so I could lead a respectful and crime and hate free life.
But the hate that’s going on in social media is just terrible.
I see things like “The Jews should stay in Lakewood,” or “The Jews are taking over everywhere,” “They can’t drive,” and more disgusting comments. I am disgusted. This is what you’re complaining about? You’ve got to be kidding me. Growing up in Lakewood, I’ve seen Jewish residents and their behavior. It was every one of our dreams to have Jewish neighbors and not the thugs we grew up next door to who never valued life or family. The way they go out of their way for one another is not something I witnessed in my neighborhood in this same town. I witnessed bloodshed on a weekly basis, not a peaceful family life.
Those who are complaining about the Jews moving into the neighborhoods, all I can say is I wish they did that 30 years earlier so that I and my friends didn’t have to grow up in fear of being shot or more on a daily basis. You haters need to get your act together and wake up and take off your blindfold.
And the ones complaining about accidents. You’ve seen a car accident and a Jew was involved? Cry me a river. The Jewish population in this town is most of the town, so learn basic math. When most of the town is Jewish, statistically many accidents will involve Jewish people. You don’t like it? How about seeing real crime and bloodshed and then complain about this stupidity. And if you can’t handle a beautiful peaceful life, take your baseless hate elsewhere.
I don’t want to keep going, but you get my drift.
Thank you for reading.
A gentile from Lakewood. Shalom all.
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If only we jews would realize what this man is saying, we wouldn’t hate ourselves so much
Well said! Ahavas chinum! 😉
Thank you! May God bless you and yours with only good. Amen.
It warms my heart to see a fellow human and Lakewooder speak out against hate for the Jewish community. Thank you for your kind words and G-d bless you!
wow. Its no nice to be appreciated. May Hashem bless you with many peaceful years.
Thank you for speaking out as well as your kind words! May G-d bless you & your loved ones!
Bless you and may there be many more like you in our community
Wow thank you for such a beautiful letter!!! May G-D bless you and your family always and may your words influence many other people ! Have a wonderful day!
Thank you for pointing out the good in us. I hope you always have kind & caring neighbors whom you feel safe among.
Thank you for your generous, brave and passionate defense of our community.
May G-D bless you and your family with an abundance of health, wealth, and peace!
Shalom and God bless you. Contrary to stereotypes, we celebrate diversity. I’m so happy to hear that you stayed and are doing well.
i have always wondered if police officers in this community consider lakewood as a plum job. i would venture to guess that most residents agree with the letter writer even if they cant express themselves so well. i know of one development in lakewood which, except for one resident, is totally jewish. so why does that family maintain a home there? because they travel a lot on business. they know that when they come home everything they had left would still be there. i worked with goyim for many years. they wanted their kids to be kind and honest,to do well in school, get married and give them grandchildren, really no different from the rest of us. the problem is that we dont read about those normal people in the newspapers. i lived in another state, in a frum neighborhood. i had black neighbors. they told me that they purposely lived in this particular place because they wanted their children to live where it was normal for kids to go to school!
Can’t agree more with this letter writer. Us as Jews are taught to treat all of mankind with dignity and respect. We keep on forgetting that family and crimeless life is the first thing on the list…and there is no community that represents that more than ours.
I grew up in Boro Park. We had one Italian neighbor that wouldn’t leave when all the other Italians on the block sold and left. She said she felt safe with the Jews. No stabbing or violence. The only thing that bothered her was that Jewish kids left snack bags on the floor in front of the shul across the street. She said it was extremely disrespectful of a holy place even though it wasn’t her religion.
Gevaldig I would like to hire you for my co.
I worked with a gentile social worker. When she got married she insisted that they live in a Jewish neighborhood. She told her husband, no robberies, not worried other men will bother her and she would feel safe when he worked late. AND, if you befriend her, you can teach her to be a Shabbos goy! I did that in Florida!!
Thanks so much for writing this letter.
I want you to know that you’re not alone.
We have a saying that “an empty barrel makes the most noise”.
Most people are just scared that because we dress differently that we’re not going to accept them but all it takes is the courage to say hello face to face to show others that we’re not against one another.
When you see all the madness in society lately, you can understand what benefit looking differently has on the ability to remain true to eternal truths, values and morals to show our neighbors that they too can keep the values of their ancestors in spite of what is going on.
I will say though that we could do better to show more respect and have patience for each other on the road – Lakewood was simply not designed for this much traffic.
Shalom to you brother!
Bravo to the letter writer!
Kudos to you for standing up!
Thank you for your support!
As an aside. I have made it a point whenever i can, and i see someone driving dangerously/erratically/ aggressively, to get a look and see who the driver is.
Lets just say that from what I observed, and in the same track as the this letters author mentions regarding statistics…
We have little (still too much, yet little) to be ashamed of.
If he can’t admit the people in Lakewood can’t drive, what can I say?
lol, your one of those..
the “lakewood people cannot drive is actually an animus stemming from hate of the “other”.
Think of who you have in mind when you say “lakewood people”, are you not one yourself?.
The fact is, anywhere you have such a high volume of cars in a rushed environment things look this way.
It has nothing to do with the PEOPLE in lakewood.
He never said his opinion on that. He actually acknowledged all the accidents in the town. Stop trying to find problems in a beautiful moment. I mean no hate btw. Just respectfully disagree with the comment you wrote. Hope you have a blessed day!
Gd Bless.
I remember those days and it wasn’t too long agao. We all knew which streets we were afraid to walk on at nights .
Let’s all learn to appreciate each other and have peace and the world will be a better place.
Excellent piece and very much appreciated. You’re a real “mensch”!
Thank you for your letter may you continue to be blessed
I totally agree with you I remember 30 years ago living by Lexington Avenue we were the last religious house on the block nothing after us and the corner building was the drug building and police use to come almost every night
Letter: I’m a Jew, and Shame on me,
Jew-Hater
When informed that a non-Jewish resident of Lakewood had posted a letter on TLS criticizing Jew Haters for assailing Jewish residents of Lakewood, a Jewish commenter responded to the letter in a comment-letter saying as follows:
“To the aforementioned letter-writer – like you, I am not one to sit and write letters to websites – although I DO have a penchant for posting comments in the comments section – but not letters.
However, when I read your letter, I couldn’t help but grab the keypad on my computer and to start typing a letter of rebuke to myself, saying as follows:
“Dear Me, Myself and I,
“I’m a Jew, and shame on me, Mr. Jew Hater!
I mean, with the rise of violent and physical attacks perpetrated against Jews, you’d think a Jew like me would find someone else to pick on other than a fine Jewish resident of Lakewood. But, no, not me! Leave it to me, the self-hating Jew hater, to find something wrong with the nice Jewish fellow from Lakewood. Perhaps his shirt is one size too long, or maybe he ordered the cheese calazone for lunch instead of my favorite dish on the menu, spinach pizza. Whatever! I always find something with which to criticize ‘The Jew from Lakewood’.
I mean, did it ever occur to me, that maybe this fellow ahead of me in line is allergic to spinach or ketchup, and had no choice but to order the cheeze calazone instead of the spinach pizza?!
I definitely need to engage in some very deep introspection, and to stop employing my self-hating character traits to attack the Jewish residents of Lakewood, or any Jewish fellow for that matter.
Shame on me!
To make amends for my sin, I’m sentencing myself to one week of meals without any spinach pizza whatsoever! In fact, not even a sliver of cheese for me for one whole week! Let that be an act of atonement for my self-hating, Jew-hating sin!……
…….Excuse me, comment readers, hold on for one second, I just need to tell the guy standing next to me something…..
“Psst, why do you always order the falafel? Try the sweet & sour salmon for once in your life, you narrow-minded Lakewood, Jewish buffoon!”
…..Sorry about the interruption; now, where was I?
Never mind, enough said.
Thank you for that compelling letter. As a gentile, I wholeheartedly agree with you. God bless our good neighbors. Freddy P.
This probably won’t be posted, but I have to say it anyway. I don’t dislike the orthodox Jewish community. I just want to know why they are trying to change Jackson. If they moved to Jackson because they liked it, then why change it? I feel like I am the stranger in my own neighborhood.
How are they changing it?
Trying to put Shuls in neighborhoods. Getting approval to builds schools on open land that will add traffic that Jackson doesn’t need. Seeing the town if any decision is against what they want to do. Leaving garbage cans in the street all week long. Eventually the town will be overcrowded like Lakewood.
I think the answer is, that no one wants to change it.
Things grow organically, and, just like all those that live there, every person who moves there expects it to be exactly as when he first moves in.
But as the crowd gets larger, the entire dynamic shifts, with the more recent newcomers thinking “this is GOING to get out of hand”, the older newcomers thinking “this Got out of hand”, and the original residents thinking “we’re being taken over”.
but the truth is, no one tried to change it, they all thought there can be one little tweak and it will be basically the same. And then they watched as the next person did their own little tweak,, till everything is different.
The fact is, that this is the way of the world. It is not specifically Jewish neighborhoods.
Where I grew up, in brooklyn, the jewish neighborhood looks very different on a once tree lined quiet Ditmas avenue.
But so does the Arabic neighborhood of coney island and foster.
So does the asian neighborhood by fort Hamilton and 60th street.
We would love to keep our own idyllic location the way we remember and love it, but the facts are things change as population and demographics change.
Its almost never the intention of the newcomers, and it certainly isnt here.
Thats how I see it.
Honestly you have valid concerns. But as the world progresses, every city no matter if there are Jews, Italians, black people, Americans, Muslims, cities change, people evolve, more people are born, more technology is invented. So if we take away the ‘Jew’ part of it, and just say you are nervous about your city changing, then it might be easier to understand it. I grew up in baltimore, not a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, and still to this day when I go back I feel like a stranger, many of my old neighbors passed on, or moved away. New folks moved in. The neighborhood evolved. But it had nothing to do with the religion or race. It was just the world running its course. And yes I agree, it sometimes scares me. And Of course I miss my childhood. I miss all my late neighbors who we were close with.
Having a shul is a basic need to Jewish life. In addition, it needs to be walking distance because, you can not drive on Shabbos
as Jews we need to live together. we need shuls, shopping….i know its very hard to move but your being offered 5x what you bought your house for and only a jew is going to buy it for that price. you see how dedicated we are to living together, we will pay 100’s of thousands more for a house just for its proximity to those very shuls that you dont like. you have all the right to dislike them and noone likes change or the feeling of being taken over but we love all our neighbors and are just trying to live as jews.
I don’t dislike them. I think a shul should not be in the middle if the block. This is not a big city. As for the need to walk doesn’t apply since they don’t have services on the sabbath. If someone would offer 5 tomes what we paid, we would be out if here. Lol
I get that Mayo, but Orthodox enclaves all over the NYC area have also ended up with environmental degradation, infrastructure collapse, bankrupting of public schools, and irresponsible overdevelopment. These types of seismic changes that Orthodox are bringing in are not being seen anywhere else in the US. Your leaders have not properly planned for this at all.
And Lakewood was poorly planned and did not keep up with growth. I wonder how many of the Orthodox want to see that type of development spread to all over Northern Ocean County? Is that how you want to live – stuck in traffic driving all over the region?
The Orthodox have a unique demographic and unique religious infrastructure needs which you did not bring up. You also have very large families and only use private schools. Nothing wrong in this, but American suburbia was not designed with this in mind – to have hundreds of private schools and hundreds of shuls in residential areas the way Orthodox need it. Again, there is nothing wrong in this and you have a right to your way of life. But your leadership should have better planning so that future growth in suburbia will not lead to the state that Lakewood is in today.
Growing up in Lakewood of nearly 40 years go myself, I couldn’t agree with the OP more!
Kudos to you!!
Stay safe always and may G-d bless!!!
Stay safe and g-d will help you
Beautiful! but we DO need to drive like a mentchen!
What a beautiful and well written article!
G-d will definitely bless you and your family!!
A yiddishe kop
Trust but verify.
I really want this letter to be what it purports to be. However, could I humbly ask Lakewood Scoop to interview the writer of this post. I’m sure that the writer is reading these written responses.
However, there is some probability that this initial letter is a hoax being perpetrated by some “wise-guy.” Please verify.
Whether the initial letter is a hoax (which I doubt) or not, the points in it are true. 20 years ago, my neighborhood was crime ridden and very dangerous. There were SWAT teams here doing drug busts almost every night. Now the neighborhood is so safe that anyone can walk alone late at night without being scared.
Bless the letter writer and all those that “doubled it”. May G-D be with you.
@Mel
I hope you are my neighbor, because truly, all my Jackson neighbors have been so caring, so warm, and so welcoming.
I understand the frustration; the feeling that we have moved closer to what you have called home for so long, and we have brought some changes with us that you seem foreign and strange. In truth, we’re not trying to change anything for those that have lived there, but in order for us to live there, we must establish Shuls, and schools, Kosher grocery stores and Kosher eateries. We must, because these are integral parts of our everyday religious life and without it we could not survive as a Jew. Everyone is welcome though, even if you may feel like an outsider in one of our establishments, an integral part of our belief system, is treating every human being with kindness and respect. So, you, and any individual who wants to, can shop in our grocery stores, eat in our eateries, and join together to make Jackson (or any town) the best family friendly place to live. Not to in anyway take away from what is familiar to you, but to add changes that make things more familiar for us. Any changes are only with the best of intentions in mind; to make the town more welcoming and open to anyone who chooses to live there.
I respect you for voicing your discomfort and frustration. I hope to meet you in real life one day so that we can openly discuss our choice of lifestyle, so that there is a better understanding of why we do some of the things that we do.
Until, wishing you (and everyone) all the best!
The term “baseless hatred” is a Jewish term. where did you hear of it?
you know the story of the Charles Terwitt guy who came into BMG….why do we need a gentile for us to realize how special we are? its a beautiful letter but i think the beauty of it is the “courage” to come out and say it.
What this guy says it’s true the crime has come down a significantly,thank god.As a Hispanic resident and parent in lakewood I have several questions if anyone could answer them for me.
1.Now that most houses in Lakewood have been bought and they are just putting up developments specifically for the Jewish community how can us Hispanic people buy homes here.
2.Also in Jackson and toms river I have been outbid on several houses because people offered more money.
3.Most of the homes the Hispanic people rent in Lakewood are beat up and why can’t we have a development and affordable homes just like the Jewish community.